201 Easy Ways to Reduce Your Taxes: 1997 Edition

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Jacks has become Canada’s folk hero of taxes. She is well-established
as an author and tax commentator, and heads up Canada’s only college
specializing in courses on taxes. Her style is nearly jargon-free and
her tone pro-taxpayer. She seems to be a long way from Bay Street, both
in approach and objectives.

In this point-form book she comments briefly on all the tax strategies
open to the typical employee and the self-employed. The emphasis is on
tax planning and families, “ordinary people” who are more concerned
with deductions for daycare than with complicated investment strategies;
people for whom taxes are the biggest expense incurred in their entire
lives.

Jacks’s 201 tips constitute a self-help course in how to level the
playing field when playing ball with Revenue Canada. She points out that
it’s a game in which Revenue Canada is both player and referee. And
guess which side gets to rewrite the rule book.

For the other player—the taxpayer—Jacks offers help in interpreting
and applying all the legal deductions available to reduce taxes for the
overall family unit.

The book takes into consideration provincial differences in tax laws,
variations in family size, age and income of family members, and sources
of income. Rule changes for the tax year are brought to the reader’s
attention with a “new” symbol. For do-it-yourself taxpayers seeking
reassurance that they are not missing deductions, it’s a great quick
read.